I thought it would be rather easy to throw something together for James Garner. Not so !! Just the Maverick stuff itself seemed like a small industry – with TV Series, spin-offs, Movies, Mini Series … etc.

Let’s get started:

Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend with Randolph Scott / 1957
Garner’s first Western. Pretty well any Western with Randolph Scott is either very watchable or Classic.

After Garner left the show during the 3rd Season …
It just wasn’t the same.Maverick – in Film and TV – went through a few permutations and convolutions over the years and will need to be covered in more depth later.

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Garner made a cameo appearance in the Bob Hope Western ComedyAlias Jesse James.

Robert Ryan

Robert Ryan

Robert Ryan was already a grizzled veteran of the screen when I was a kid – and I missed most of his earlier work of the 40’s and 50’s. And to me he always seemed to be one of those actors that somehow were never young – even in his early movies – with a presence, stature and persona that moved past his years and youth.

Rugged and somewhat gruff in his portrayals – even his smile was often more like a sardonic smirk – he often played the heavy – a villain. Yet he surely played strong and well along side the likes of:

Sometimes the answers to seemingly complex social problems are hidden in plain sight. Social engineers, lawmakers and “experts” from all around spout off an endless stream of statistics to support or rationalize their position one side or the other of the “gun control” issue. Now I don’t like the term “gun control” for it is ambiguous and usually used to mask the real intent of those advocating it so for the purpose of this discussion let us just say “more restrictive guns laws”. One might think that this is a relatively new idea, it is not! You can go back to the Roman Empire and find the existence of cross bow control, you can look to England and find attempts to disarm the various colonists under their imperial thumb – the American colonists come to mind as an unsuccessful attempt to debar the use of arms to an indigent population. There are many examples of the failure of laws which attempt to disarm the violent in our society but none are more graphic as examples or easier to measure in effect than those in the “wild west” of America circa 1870-1900.

Reporting from Tombstone, Ariz. — A billboard just outside this Old West town promises “Gunfights Daily!” and tourists line up each afternoon to watch costumed cowboys and lawmen reenact the bloody gunfight at the OK Corral with blazing six-shooters.

But as with much of the Wild West, myth has replaced history. The 1881 shootout took place in a narrow alley, not at the corral. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday weren’t seen as heroic until later; they were initially charged with murder.

And one fact is usually ignored: Back then, Tombstone had far stricter gun control than it does today. In fact, the American West’s most infamous gun battle erupted when the marshal tried to enforce a local ordinance that barred carrying firearms in public. A judge had fined one of the victims $25 earlier that day for packing a pistol.